Birth weight and the survival of babies of diabetic women.

The high perinatal mortality among the babies of diabetic women is often thought to be directly proportionate to their birth weight, but in an earlier analysis of the Edinburgh series the smaller babies at any gestational age were found to be at greater risk. It was also apparent that some pre-diabetic and diabetic women can bear whole families of large babies who progress normally, while others have a dismal record of foetal loss which may be independent of the duration of maternal diabetes or of the quality of its control (Farquhar, 1959). The disparity between these observations and conventional opinion has prompted this re-examination of the subject in a larger series.